Ghost Trains
by prepare4trouble
Summary: Alan is searching for a home he isn't sure exists any more. Sam is just along for the ride.


_A/N - My first Lost Boys fic in quite a while. This is not exactly a sequel to Mirror Mirror, but it is set in that universe, which basically means that Alan is a vampire and he has recently turned Sam.  
_

_The title comes from the AFI song Where We Used To Play, which in addition to being an awesome song, also served as the soundtrack to and major influence for this story_

_As always, I don't own the Lost Boys._

* * *

Ghost Trains

Alan took a long, deep drag on his cigarette and felt the smoke fill his lungs. He held it there for a moment, then exhaled slowly, expelling it in a long, thin plume into the night sky. He didn't know why he started smoking. One night he had killed a guy who had a packet of Camels in his back pocket instead of a wallet and he'd thought, why not? Like he'd said to Sam when he asked, it wasn't like it could kill him.

Standing next to him, Sam wrinkled his nose in obvious disgust as he waved one hand back and forth before his face, breaking the plume into a disorganized cloud. As if that wasn't enough, he coughed theatrically. Alan refrained from reacting. Sam, like any vampire, didn't actually need to breathe. Yes, then needed to take air in if they wanted to speak, or if they were hunting by scent, or smoking. And it was a habit picked up in life that could be hard to shift. But if it really bothered Sam that much, all he really needed to do was cease taking in air for a few minutes.

Sam either didn't realize that or, far more likely, didn't care. His hand still fanning the air in front of his mouth and nose, he looked at Alan. "Blow your poison somewhere else, bud," he said. "Some of us prefer to seem attractive to our victims, not have them run the other way when we get close enough for them to get a whiff. Didn't you hear? Smoking's not cool anymore."

Alan considered ignoring the outburst, but though better of it. Instead, he responded by taking another drag on the cigarette and blowing it straight into the younger vampire's face. He smirked, dropped the butt on the floor, trod on it with his heel and walked away. He didn't need to check whether Sam was following him.

Truth be told, Alan wasn't entirely sure why he had turned Sam. It hadn't been something he had planned. He hadn't even been expecting to find his former teammate in that crappy little nowhere town, it had been sheer co-incidence that he had spotted him walking home one night and followed him to his door. Once there, turning him had seemed the only logical thing to do. Alan needed a place to stay during the day, and anyway, Sam didn't look like he's had much going on in his life. Alan probably did him a favor.

Besides, if he was being honest, he had missed the little irritant. Or rather, there was a hole in him, one left by Edgar, and by the life they used to have, and for a moment he had thought that Sam might be able to fill it. For a while it had even worked.

From the clothing of the people around him, Alan supposed it was a cool night. The temperature didn't touch him as he strode through the streets in his black t-shirt, enjoying the sensation of it rippling in the wind against his skin. He was drawing looks from a few of the humans that passed them, hurrying home to their warm homes to bathe in the glow of their television sets.

"Hey, slow down won't you?" Sam called from several steps behind him. Alan continued walking at the same pace. Sam caught up to him and fell into step at his side.

He wondered why Sam stuck around. Back at Sam's apartment, when he had announced that he was leaving there had been no command for him to accompany him. He had expected his friend to bid him good riddance and wave him out of the door. Instead, Sam had packed a bag with a far more clothes and mementos than Alan thought necessary, and followed him into the night.

It made sense, he supposed, in hindsight. What else could he have done? It wasn't like he could go back to his job like nothing had happened. Besides, he suspected that Sam felt that same sense of emptiness that he did, and perhaps following him went a way toward filling it. He was glad of the company anyway, at least part of the time. It made him feel like nothing had changed.

"So, are we planning on wandering around all night looking cool – and I mean that in both senses of the word, bud. The black really works for you, but the bare arms just look out of place – or are we going to do something fun?"

On the other hand, perhaps Sam had gone with him as some kind of punishment for turning him, planning to irritate him for the rest of eternity.

* * *

Each town they visited was a clone of the last. Every high street boasted the same storefronts, the same coffee chains. Had it been like that when he was human? He had never left Santa Carla before he was turned, but he was sure that places were more unique back then. There had been a McDonald's, of course there had. He had even been there once or twice, but all the other now familiar names that he saw night after night had been alien to him once. The world was changing around him. It was happening slowly, but it was happening.

He wondered how the truly old vampires felt. Those who had been born in the previous century, or even earlier than that. Those from an era before electricity and before cars and airplanes. He wondered what changes he would see in his lifetime. The thought was disquieting.

This town, like every coastal town they visited, made him think of Santa Carla. Even now, in the off season, it was filled with surfer kids and the stores that catered to them. Alan found himself drawn to these places, examining the surf boards on display and wondering whether any of them had been shaped by his brother's hand.

He had found Edgar a long time ago. He hadn't exactly gone to a lot of trouble to hide his location, if that had even been his intention, and Alan could think of no other reason for him to skip town in the daytime not long after Alan had been turned. But his brother had set up shop a few towns down the road, hunting vampires and making so much noise in the supernatural world that even Alan, new to the scene, had caught wind of it. Hell, he was even driving around in a truck with 'Frog Brothers' printed on the side. It was like he wanted Alan to come and get him.

But Alan had waited, watching from a distance and not making his presence known. Not yet.

"Thinking of taking it up?" Sam asked. The question pulled Alan out of his reverie and he glanced at the other vampire. "You might need to re-think the wardrobe, but I think you'd be good at it. Those vampire reflexes, we're pretty much made for surfing."

Alan turned back, looking at the surfboards once again. "Hardly," he said.

Sam exhaled a puff of air through pursed lips. "You know, that's the first thing you've said to me in three nights," he said.

Alan looked at him again, trying to remember whether that was true.

"You won't find it here, you know," Sam said. He spoke in a hushed voice, more serious than Alan was used to.

"Find what?" he heard himself saying before he even had the opportunity to decide whether or not he wanted to continue the conversation.

"Home," Sam said in an almost reverential tone. "That's what you're looking for, isn't it?"

Alan shook his head once, left to right and back again. "If I wanted a home, I'd have stayed in your apartment."

Sam frowned, chewing his bottom lip with teeth hidden behind their human guise. Alan regarded him from the corner of his eye. In many ways he still seemed so human. He had assumed that once he ensured that Sam had made his first kill, the last of his humanity would dissipate in the same way he had believed his own had. Now he wondered two things; had he been less human in the first place, and had he really changed as much as he had believed.

"You know that's not what I mean," Sam told him.

Alan turned away, back to the surfboards in the window display. "Find us a place to sleep," he said.

Sam sighed, then bent in a mock bow. "Your wish is my command, master."

Then Alan felt the movement of air on his skin as Sam disappeared into the night sky. He pushed down a stab of irritation. Sam still had a lot to learn, not the least of which was a little discretion. He looked around. The few people on the street somehow didn't seem to have noticed the man suddenly leaping, Superman style, into the air. Nonetheless, it had been a risky move and there had been no need for it.

As he continued to survey the area, looking now for possible targets for his evening meal, he began to think about what Sam had said. He had been preoccupied lately with thoughts of home. Not of creating a new one, as he had implied that Sam meant, but of the one he had left behind. The one now irrevocably lost to time and circumstances.

When exactly had Sam Emerson, of all people, gained the ability to read him so deeply that he could detect thoughts and ideas so deep below the surface that even he himself had barely noticed them? Irritated again, he attempted to squash the thought, but once noticed it became impossible to ignore. Like a mosquito bite, itching just below the surface of his skin.

Sam was right. He wanted to go home.

* * *

Santa Carla. He tested the words out in his mind, lips forming the shape of them but giving them no voice.

Even to his vampire skin, the air felt cold at this altitude. Below him, the ground and the inky blackness of the sea rushed by at dizzying speed. They kept, more or less to the coast, traveling southwards as little by little the landscape grew more familiar.

Winter had perhaps not been the ideal time to come. Not if he was chasing memories. So many of the Santa Carla days and nights that he re-lived in his mind had taken place during the sweltering summer months when the boardwalk teamed with life and the creatures that fed upon it. Winter had been long days cooped up in the store, followed by even longer nights out patrolling for monsters that they rarely found. But winter it was, and unless he decided turn around and come back in four months, there was nothing he could do about it. So on he flew, Sam following slightly behind him, until the city, larger and more sprawling than any of the surrounding towns appeared beneath him and he found himself moving downward as though being drawn in by its gravitational pull.

* * *

They strode side by side down the semi-familiar boardwalk. All the old landmarks were there, the fairground rides still working, playing loud but now unfamiliar music as the lights blinked convulsively in time to the beat. Many of the shops he remembered were still there too, looking much the same as the last time he had seen them. Some a little shabbier, others freshened up with a new coat of paint. It reminded him of how short a time he had actually been away.

"Nothing ever changes, does it?" Sam muttered as they passed a group of kids running from a shop clutching fistfuls of stolen goods.

Alan glanced at him, not sure whether the question had been aimed at him or at the world in general. He chose to ignore it, until a little way ahead of him he caught sight of a memory. "Oh, I don't know about that," he said.

It was the last thing he had been expecting. When he had left for the final time, the old store had been closed down, boarded up, dark and abandoned. He had expected to find it in the same condition, or perhaps to find something else in its place; a souvenir shop, a bar or cafe, maybe a surf shop, perhaps one even stocking boards shaped by the hand of someone that had once called it home. Nothing would have surprised him. Nothing but this.

It was a little too modern for Alan's tastes, too clean and shiny. Above the large display window full of movie memorabilia, a bright, back-lit sign advertised the store name. Inside he could see shelves of familiar merchandise, titles he recognized from his human childhood. Where the old shop had once sat, was a brand new comic book store.

By his side, Sam grinned widely. Before Alan could stop him, he had zipped through the sliding glass doors and gone inside.

Irritated, but still curious, Alan followed him inside. The store was air conditioned, no more rotating fans doling out meager but pathetically welcome gusts of warm air like in his day. It seemed bigger too, impossibly. Better use of the space, he assumed, though he found himself checking for evidence that the walls had been moved outward. They all appeared to be exactly where he had left them.

He took in a deep breath, inhaling slowly through his nose. The scent of dust and old paper was conspicuous by its absence. A large television screen was mounted on the wall in a way that would have been impossible several years ago. It was playing a movie. Alan recognized characters from the pages of Marvel comics.

It was too clinical. The place looked impressive – had it opened in competition to Frog's Comics, it would have put them out of business in a month – but there was something missing. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it lacked some essential piece.

"Hey, check this out."

Sam was beside him once again, holding a comic book. He held it aloft for Alan to see. Inside a plastic sleeve, supported by a cardboard board, was a copy of Destroy All Vampires.

"Blast from the past, right?" Sam said. He held it out for Alan to take. Alan ignored the offer and turned to leave. There was nothing there for him. Not anymore. He was aware of Sam following him as always.

"Cool place," Sam said when they were outside and some way down the boardwalk.

Alan ignored him. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, took one out and lit it. Sam was still holding the comic book, freed now from its plastic sleeve. He opened it and flicked quickly through the pages.

"No soul though," the younger vampire added as he pushed the comic and its supporting board back inside the plastic bag.

Alan glanced at him now. He exhaled smoke through his nostrils and affected disinterest.

"No heart, you know? You couldn't hang out there like you could at you guys' place. It needs an Edgar." He froze suddenly, overcome with obvious panic at his own words. "And an Alan, of course," he added quickly. "Most important piece. Goes without saying."

Alan eyed him curiously. Once again, Sam was right. Where he had failed to see what was missing, Sam had immediately identified the problem. It wasn't the place, it was the people.

He deliberately increased his pace enough that Sam had to jog to catch up to him. "Time to go." he said.

"Go?" Sam said. "Go find somewhere to stay, you mean?"

Alan ignored him, ducking down a side street leading away from the boardwalk and into the town proper.

"Go find some food?" Sam tried. "You can't mean you want to leave. We just got here. There's so much I want to do. See if my grandpa's old place is still there, check out the old vampire hangout..."

Alan continued to walk ahead of him. "You are welcome to stay here, Sam," he told him. "I didn't ask you to come with me in the first place."

"Yeah," Sam's face twisted in a way Alan didn't think he had seen before, "didn't exactly leave me with a lot of other options though, did you? Pulled my whole life out from under me just because you needed a place to sleep. What was I supposed to do?"

So emotional. Alan turned away, uninterested. As he walked, he listened to the sounds of the boardwalk, the sounds of his former home, growing fainter until even his supernatural hearing strained to hear it. Sam had fallen into pensive silence, allowing his feet to fall in time with those of his maker. Alan allowed himself the smallest of smiles as he planned his next move.

"Anyway," Sam added after several moments, "You might not have asked me to come, but I bet you're glad I did, right? Think how boring life would be without me. So where are we rushing off to, can you at least tell me that?"

"I doubt you'll know it," Alan told him. He finished the last drag of his cigarette and allowed the smoldering end to fall through his fingers and onto the ground. "A little town not far from here, Luna Bay."

Sam grinned widely. "Are you serious?" His excitement was obvious not only in his expression and the tone of his still entirely too human voice, but also in the hint of fang he accidentally displayed. Alan despaired of his fledgeling sometimes. He had no control whatsoever. It wouldn't have surprised him if Sam had allowed his eyes to glow. "You're finally doing it, you're putting the band back together."

Without giving him a response, Alan took to the air. Behind him, he felt Sam do the same. Sam had surprised him in how much of his self he had retained in the transformation, the change in him had been more subtle than in himself, but no less impressive.

He wondered what kind of a vampire his brother would make.

If nothing else, it would be an interesting experiment.


End file.
